“I’m hanged if I say anything of the sort,” muttered Jack, whose prominent sensation was rage at the idea that he, an Englishman, a gentleman, a man with an address, and a card—though he had unluckily left it at home—should be subjected to such an indignity, stopped in his proceedings by a dozen trumpery Spaniards!
Alvar was not so full of a sense of the liberty of the subject; he felt sure that he was mistaken for Manoel, and more than suspected that the government might have been justified in detaining his cousin. He did not, however, wish to confide this to Jack, of whose prudence he was doubtful, and knew that if the worst came to the worst, his grandfather could get them out of the scrape.
There might be no danger, but it was very uncomfortable, and provisions being scarce in the emergency, the captain—who looked much more like a bandit than an officer—gave his prisoners no supper but a bit of bread. Alvar was Spaniard enough to endure the fasting, but Jack, after his day of mountain climbing, was ready to eat his fingers off with hunger; and as the hours wore on, began really to feel sick, wretched, and low-spirited, and though he preserved an unmoved demeanour, to wonder inwardly what his father would say if he knew where he was, and to remember that the Spaniards were a cruel people and invented the Inquisition! And then he wondered if Gipsy was thinking of him.
Moreover, it was very cold, and they were of course tired to begin with, so that, when at length the morning dawned, Alvar was startled to see how like Jack looked to Cheriton after a bad night, and made such representations to the captain that Englishmen could not bear cold and hunger, that he obtained a fair share of bread and a couple of onions—provisions which Jack enjoyed more than he would have done had he guessed what Alvar had said to procure them.
“I’m up to anything now,” he said. “If they would only let us put a note in the post for Cherry, it would be rather a lark after all.”
“I do not know where you will find a post-office,” said Alvar disconsolately, as they were marched off in an opposite direction to Ronda. “If Cherry only does not climb that mountain to look for us!”
“I should like to set this country to rights a little,” said Jack.
“That,” said Alvar dryly, “is what many have tried to do, but they have not succeeded.”
The prisoners were very well guarded, and though Alvar made more than one attempt to converse with the captain, he got scarcely any answer. Still, from the exceedingly curious glances with which he regarded them, Alvar suspected that he was not quite clear in his own mind as to their identity. After a long day’s march they struck down on a small Moorish-looking town, called Zahara, built beside a wide, quick-rushing river.
And now Alvar’s hopes rose, as here resided an acquaintance of his grandfather, a noted breeder of bulls, who knew him well, and had once seen Cheriton at Seville. Besides, the authorities of Zahara might be amenable to reason.